06 June, 2016

I am a fan
of Kona Cotton they have the most beautiful reds. Cardinal, “Red” Red and Tomato
are my favourites and just the right quality of whites too. I love to work with
them whenever I use “new” fabrics. But,
for my CHANEL quilt the “simple” cotton was just missing something.

I am hording
fabrics just like every other quilter, however, what I buy is almost always red
, red and white and sometimes plain white if it is a special white fabric. Which
means, I happened to have a fat quarter
of Oakshott New-Colourshott White Marble (9131) in my stash of white fabrics. And
that was exactly what I wanted for my CHANEL Quilt. A very good quality pure cotton
with kind of a “glow” to it without being “chintzy”. Oakshott Fabricscalls it “...a
smooth, lustrous finish...” it actually is mercerised Cotton. And as it is regular cotton I still will be
able to wash my quilt in the machine because my Chanel Quilt is for cuddling
not the catwalk.

Unfortunately,
Oakshott fabrics are not readily available in every Quiltshop – at least not in
Germany and even on quilt markets at e.g the European Patchwork Meetingonly one or two vendors sell it. I found the fantastic
shop owner Nina Reingruber from 1001quilt on the
Internet .She has a large range of
Oakshott Fabrics and was so kind to even send me little sample swatches of
similar colours with my order of whites, black and greys.

I took the
course and learned so much about how to “tweak” the ring to get it round. Not
that I am a pro yet but after her course at least I always know what went wrong with
my “anneauxs”. In case you want to know I am using Kona Cotton in black and white and Aurifil thread. Though, in the end the Kona Cotton will not be what I choose to work with for my "real Quilt". It was just not CHANELized enough.

Here are some pictures
from my work in progress during Marti’s course.

Lots and
lots of pieces, mostly “melons” and little bits. Cutting all the stuff really takes time but Marti's templates where really good to cut with. A single Weeding Ring block has a diameter of about 43 cm (17"). The loose paper leaves with
the CHANEL logo in the Background host my design ideas and sketches - still in the pre-Moleskine phase
then.

Almost everything "on point". I am so proud of it, too bad I am not using it in the end.

And here I am sewing the "melon" on the single arc. Marti’s funny
explanation how to remeber how to sew those two together: always the waist over the hip just like on your body - meaning the cut
out part on the curvy respectively the concave on convex part and it works. It
is so much easier to sew the pieces together this way.

They kind of fit better which should not make a difference but that's one of the quilt mysteries I guess.